


Jokes and Half-Truths

by Kragle (Lizardon)



Series: Repeating Herself [1]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Bad Decisions, Bad Puns, F/M, Implied Sexual Content, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Canon, Sexual Humor, this is not the endgame ship for this AU I swear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-03
Updated: 2018-01-03
Packaged: 2019-02-27 21:11:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13256703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lizardon/pseuds/Kragle
Summary: Alphys had only intended to help someone she thought could use it, maybe make a friend if she was lucky. Honest. She didn't intend to go out drinking with Sans, or flirt with him, or any of that. Honest.





	Jokes and Half-Truths

“Sans, you know if you stopped skipping so much, you would be at the top of the class instead of me.” 

Alphys had caught Sans walking from his home in the complete opposite direction of their college again. Most days she ignored this, and it was indeed a thing that happened most days. None of her business, really. Lately though, words like ‘expel’ were being thrown around in their college about him. Even if it wasn’t her business, today she had to speak up. He grinned at her, that usual mischievous smile he wore moments before unleashing one of his terrible puns onto the world. 

“yeah, you’re right. why don’t you come skip with me, then? so we’ll be on equal footing.” 

Maybe for a moment she went crazy, or maybe she was just completely tired of being worried about him, but she smiled back at him and said “Sure. I’m not going to make a habit out of this but-” 

But she cared about him. She’d seen what he was capable of, he was neck and neck with her for valedictorian for a reason. He was nothing short of a genius. She’d read the rough drafts his dissertation, and even she had difficulty understanding the complexity of some of it. Despite this, he was a simple and humble little skeleton monster. Alphys had trouble relating to most of her peers, they either regarded her as a living dictionary or acted like her success was a mockery of their own progress. Their treatment of her made her constantly anxious and doubtful about herself. Sans seemed to be oblivious to how everyone else felt about her. He greeted her every day with a “good mornin, al.” and a joke. He always checked his ideas over with her before even considering asking a professor. He was charming and funny, if not extremely distant. He smelled like french fries. She kind of maybe had a huge crush on him. Maybe.

But, of course, Sans hadn’t been attending class very much. She had no doubt he could smooth talk his way out of being expelled for attendance, and he certainly had the grades to keep his head off the chopping block. The real trouble was where he was going during the day, and that was what made her worry. She hoped she could keep him out of trouble by being there with him, though if he really wanted to do something it wasn’t like she could stop him. Things like that took courage, a trait Alphys sorely lacked.  
“B-but I could probably use the break.”

He stared dumbfounded at her, like she had just said that she hated all anime forever. Then he smiled back at her. It looked a lot sincerer than her own grimace.

“that’s the spirit, al. follow me.”

It was barely ten on a Tuesday morning. He was going to go to his favorite place in the entire world, a charming pub in Snowdin, and he was going to order a plate of fries with double extra ketchup. After he finished them he was going to keep drinking and drinking until the bartender cut him off. Then, depending on what level of drunk he was, he would either wobble himself home or pass out in a booth at the pub. Regardless, the day would end with him getting hollered at by his brother about ‘not applying himself’ or ‘treating life like a joke’ until he puked himself to sleep. She only knew this because she would go to his house looking for him for help on a project, only to be greeted at the door by his older brother Papyrus instead. The tall skeleton would then vent to her for the next hour or so about how his baby brother was ‘off at that dreadful Grillby’s again’. It really wasn’t any of her business, but she would sit and listen to him blow off steam for a while. It was obvious he didn’t have anyone else to confide in.

Sans didn’t speak much to her on the way to the offending pub, but that was kind of to be expected from him. Honestly, he looked delighted to have someone to drink with. She couldn’t help but wonder if he was used to getting drunk alone. They walked inside and found their way to a booth off in the corner. Sans called to the bartender, a menacing looking flame monster, and ordered his plate of fries and two shots of whiskey. She coughed, nervously.

“S-Sans, I…” Words caught up in her throat. ‘I think you have a drinking problem’? Because, well, no shit. He wasn’t exactly an idiot. ‘I know you deserve better for yourself than this’? No, he was probably used to hearing things like that from Papyrus. There was nothing she could think to say to him that he hadn’t probably heard a thousand times before from monsters much more worthy of his consideration than her.

“heh, people are gonna think we’re out on a date.” Her mind blanked when he said that. She stared at him. He was picking at his fries with an affected smile on his face.

“Are we on a date?” He shoveled the last of his fries into his mouth.

“no offense, al, but the only dating I want to do with you is carbon dating. you’re not exactly my type.” He drank his shot and gestured for her to drink the other one.  
She glared at the shot glass as if staring at it could will it out of existence. She was not much of a drinker, a terrible lightweight. When she did drink she preferred colorful cocktails that were more fruit syrup than booze. But if she didn’t drink it, Sans would. Drinking it insured she could keep him semi-sober a bit longer. She choked the whiskey down.

“Y-you have a type?” She wasn’t going to have her crush on him smashed into a million pieces without at least a little fight.

“i’m married.” He was wearing that shit-eating grin again. Could Sans have any serious conversation that wasn’t just the setup to a terrible pun? She wasn’t going to let him have his fun, especially when it was this obvious which joke he was setting up.

“Let me guess, to science?” He laughed, a little ‘nyeh heh heh’ that sounded an awful lot like his brother’s, only about a thousand times quieter. 

“nah, science is the busty mistress I sneak out to see on weekends.” Well, that explains your hesitance to attend class, she snarked to herself. “when me and pap were really little he got it in his head that we ought to get married, to make sure we would be together forever. I said to him that being brothers was way better than being married, but he was insistent. let me tell you, it’s really hard for me to say no to my bro.” 

Was he seriously opening up to her to tell her something about himself that was only like, barely a joke? She nodded, fascinated by the strange way Sans was behaving.

“we even waited for gyftmas so ‘santa’ could officiate our wedding. you shoulda seen the look on the king’s face when we told him we wanted him to wed us for our gyftmas present, heh. we didn’t have anybody but each other growing up, so it wasn’t like anybody explained to us what being married was about. we just knew being married meant you loved each other really much. anyway, that’s how i got married to my brother, at age three, by the king, dressed as santa.” He looked like he was having the time of his life recalling this…story? Joke? He suddenly frowned. “of course with how i am nowadays, i gotta wonder if pap would wanna divorce me.” He sighed longingly and gestured for another round of drinks. They took their shots in silence.

“You and your brother must be pretty close.”

“he’s the only reason i get out of bed these days. you got any siblings, al?”

“N-no, I’m an only child. I kinda, uh, spent a lot of t-time alone growing up. You two are lucky to have each other.” He looked Alphys over, like he was thinking about something that her appearance could provide the answer to. Clearly not finding it, he sighed and took another shot.

“you spend a lot of time alone now.” His voice sounded concerned. Was he, the drunk in danger of getting expelled because of his addiction, worried about her emotional wellbeing? Was it that obvious to everyone, even him, that she was an outcast, a freak, a creep, not worth anybody else’s attention? No doubt everybody was laughing at her. She gulped down a drink herself, and tried her best to make the wince on her face look like a smile.

“Y-yeah. I’m n-not too good with people. I prefer my machines.”  
'  
“i’m not too fond of people myself, usually. i like you though, al. you’re something really special.”

That was…probably the nicest thing anyone had ever said to her? She looked at Sans. Who was this strange little skeleton? She realized she knew almost nothing about him. She knew he was a physics major nearly done with his dissertation, that he was brilliant. She knew he was an alcoholic, and that he worried his brother. There was so much more to him than his drinking problem or his thesis, though. He was a whole someone, a whole someone who seemed to genuinely care about her. But why did he care about her?

“Sans, I l-like you too.” She was no doubt blushing. She drank another shot. Then another. She was totally embarrassing herself, wasn’t she?

“man, people are really gonna think we’re on a date now. two single grad students sharing drinks and sayin how much we like each other. scandalous.”

“S-S-Sans, we b-b-barely even know each other. You know nothing about me a-and I know e-e-even less about y-you.” Alphys suddenly became aware she was probably buzzed. Drinking always made her speech impediment ten times worse. He didn’t seem to notice her extra stuttering.

“aw, al. don’t say stuff like that. just call me mr. dictionary, because for you i am an open book.” Yeah, as if, she thought to herself. Sans always had an air of mystery about himself, and he did very little to dispel it. Even she, at the very bottom of the social totem pole, had more conversations with her classmates than he did. Admittedly most of those conversations were just about trying to bum test answers off her, but still.

“Y-y-yeah?” She leaned forward over the table dramatically. Apparently, she was much more inebriated than she thought she was because she ended up flopping over the table face first, landing with her face smashed directly into Sans’s torso. She was about to pull herself away and stutter an apology when she noticed a tiny, barely detectable hum of magic coming from underneath his hoodie, within his ribcage. His soul. Something about it was sickeningly off.

In monster culture, getting too close to another monster’s soul without their consent is considered a faux pas. Inevitably, it will sometimes happen on accident, but it’s always an uncomfortable accident. But to actually read another monster’s soul nonconsensually is social suicide. Alcohol, scientific curiosity, concern for Sans’s health, or a combination of the three may have resulted in Alphys forgetting basic etiquette for a moment or two. She pushed out a tiny stream of her magic to read his soul. The shock of what she felt made her gasp out. His soul was the way the souls of monsters that have fallen down feel: devoid of life, moments from dusting. A hum so low it was bordering silent.

She pushed her magic back inside herself and scrambled back to her side of the booth in horror. Her eyes stared at the spot on his hoodie where his soul would be, then slowly brought her gaze up to his face. His sockets were pupil-less, and his face was empty of emotion. He looked like cold, unfeeling, ancient death, more akin to the pictures of skeleton monsters in their history books than the stumpy goofus he usually was. For once, Alphys could completely relate to the human fear of skeletons.

“Uh, S-S-Sans, are y-y-you ok?” He didn’t look ok, that was for sure. He was so still that for a moment she thought he had fallen down. Then, he blinked and shrugged his shoulders.

“not drunk enough yet, but fine besides that.” He choked down three shots without a moment’s pause between them. Someone from across the bar cheered a “Woo, Sansy!” at the feat.

“B-but, your s-s-soul, you’re d-d….” He pressed two fingerbones to her snout and made a “shhh” sound.

“it’s been like that for as long as i can remember, al. don’t worry one bit about it. keep it to yourself though, eh? don’t tell…” He laughed weakly. “a soul.”

She nodded innocently, but her brain was going a mile a minute in full scientist mode. If his soul was that weak, it meant he had no hope. Monsters that had fallen down were said to be immobilized by their hopelessness, but that hopelessness was usually brought on by illness or injury. She looked Sans over. He was tapping his phalanges nervously on the booth’s tabletop, face blushing blue with embarrassment and alcohol. He looked drunk, sure, but not sick. He didn’t look hurt either, besides maybe emotionally. She had just probed his soul, after all. 

She cringed at her own stupidity, then brought one claw to her chest. Sans looked at her with a confused expression before he noticed what she was doing. Her own soul was out of her, hovering just above her open palm. His tiny pupils grew wide at the sight of the small inverted white heart.

“H-h-here uh, r-r-read my soul. So w-we’re even.” She could feel a crowd forming around their booth, bar patrons all staring at her exposed soul. Showing your soul to someone else was an intimate gesture usually reserved for the privacy of the bedroom. It wasn’t exactly a sexual act, but was most commonly used to express to a romantic partner how much you trusted them. Not at all appropriate for the middle of a busy pub, basically. Sober Alphys would never dream of doing such a thing. Unfortunately, sober Alphys was not available at that moment. Sans made a tiny “uh” before he nodded and let a tiny beam of his blue magic snake towards it.

Alphys hated having her soul read. Having someone so intimately aware of her inadequacies always left her feeling violated. Like Sans, she had a very weak soul. She knew it was her anxiety that made it as pathetically weak as it was. Monsters with mental illnesses naturally had lower hope. Sans’s soul hadn’t felt like Alphys’s own naturally weak soul, though. It felt dead. He had said it had been that way for as long as he could remember. Could he be hopeless because his soul was weak, then, as opposed to the opposite being true? She was broken out of her theorizing trance by the feeling of Sans’s prickly blue magic withdrawing from her soul, and a voice calling out.

“Hey, lovebirds!” Alphys snapped her soul back into her chest and turned to face the voice. It came from a very round catfish monster standing next to the bartender. “Grillbz says he’s cutting you guys off. This is a family establishment, you weirdos.” Her hazy brain took a moment to process what was just said to her.  
“  
Oh, oh! N-n-no, it’s not like that! Sans and I aren’t d-d-dating! We’re p-practically strangers!” The catfish monster made a disgusted face at her. That was really, really not the right thing to say. Sans stood up before she could stick her foot in her mouth any further. Her stumpy, drunk knight in shining armor.

“c’mon al. lets go rub our souls together someplace more private. grillby clearly doesn’t want the patronage of his best customer.” Or not.

“R-r-rub souls? Sans-don’t-say-perverted-things-like-that!” Sans turned to her for a moment and winked, then went back to glaring daggers at the flame elemental behind the bar. Was this what drunk Sans thought constituted a prank? 

“you bet your scaly tail we’re gonna rub souls, al. get you all nestled in my ribcage so you’re snug on it and…” He interrupted his own perverted ranting with a fit of Papyrus-loud drunken “nyeh heh heh”s. Alphys entered a state of maximum panic. She grabbed him by the wrist.

“Oh, y-y-yeah, of course. L-let’s just, uh, get out of here then!” She pulled him outside of the bar before she could even finish the sentence, an easy feat considering he was only made of bones. When they were standing knee deep in snow a block away, she let go of his arm and tried her best to scowl at him.

“ok, ok, al. i know what you’re thinking but guess who just got us out of having to hear grillby rant at us about paying my tab?” Seemingly forgetting about whatever the hell just happened in there, he started shakily walking in the direction of his house. “heh, i got the boot a lot earlier than usual today. pap won’t be home for another hour, so i’m gonna go raid my personal stash. you coming with?”

Even though she wanted to strangle that little bag of bones more than help him at the moment, she smiled. This was the perfect opportunity to be the Responsible Adult, ignoring that she had done a very bad job at that thus far.

“Uh, a-actually, Sans, I’m pretty uh, w-w-wasted. D-do you think you could h-help me get home?” She lived in a tiny dorm room in Hotland, easily well more than an hour’s trip even taking the Riverperson’s ferry. By the time he got back, Papyrus would be home and he’d have sobered up a bit. Best of all, it wasn’t even a lie. She was indeed quite wasted, and probably should not be making the trek home alone. There were quite a few open pits of lava in between here and home, after all.

“you sure you don’t wanna crash on our couch? i spent enough hangovers there myself to tell you it’s a comfy nap spot.” She shook her head no, ignoring how nice not stumbling halfway across the Underground while drunk off her ass sounded. He shrugged and draped her arm over his shoulder. “don’t drink much, huh, al?”

“I’m c-c-cold blooded. H-hits me hard, and uh, s-s-stays there a while, too.” Being lugged around like a handbag was not doing well for her stomach, even though Sans was being surprisingly gentle with her. Really gentle.

“lucky you. y’know how much a guy with no blood like me’s gotta drink to even get a nice buzz? a buzz-illion.” That one was terrible, even by his standards. She tried to focus on being annoyed, instead of how woozy she was feeling. 

Or worse, how close his soul was again. It was like a vortex in his chest, a black hole that no life dared escape. How could he keep living, let alone find the strength to prop a fat, drunk lizard upright and trudge through the snow? If he was that hopeless, how did he manage to get up every day? Sure, he wasn’t exactly coping very well, considering his alcoholism, but compared to how he should be, he was doing incredibly.

“when i was reading your soul, i checked your magic level. it’s pretty puny, heh. i can’t even imagine what that’s like. we skeletons got magic for days, y’know. it’s the only thing i got going for me, besides my dashing good looks and my funny bone.” 

Of all the things about her soul she was embarrassed about, her magic level was the most embarrassing. She couldn’t do much more than make a tiny bit of static charge with her electricity magic, let alone anything more extravagant like the colored spells skeletons were capable of. It wasn’t a genetic problem; reptile monsters were capable of some incredible magical abilities. Hell, being a reptile meant she was related to dragons, the most iconic fire-breathers out there. This weird defect was unique to her; something in her was just wrong. Something besides her personality, her anxiety, her weight, her stutter, her stupid stupid idiot drunk brain that was currently wondering what having that wild skeleton magic coursing all through her would feel like…

“W-we’re not so different, huh?” He stopped walking. They had reached the Riverperson’s boat. She lowered herself into it, leaning on Sans for support. “We’re both b-b-broken.” His hand lingered on her claw, even after she was settled. Their eyes met. His face looked like it was trying to express about a thousand emotions at once.

“yeah, i suppose you’re right.” He sat down next to her, and rested his head on her shoulder. She turned beet red. Sans was being downright cuddly. 

“Tra la la, one lost leaves a hole, two halves make a whole.” The Riverperson chimed in, singing their usual cryptic songs. Alphys wondered if the Riverperson was also misinterpreting her and Sans’s relationship. She decided she was too woozy and Sans’s head was too comfortable to care.

“H-H-Hotland,” she said to them with great effort. They nodded and started to paddle. Sans was already snoring on her shoulder. Alphys wondered if he should be getting a doctorate in naptime instead of physics, since it was clearly his true field of expertise. They drifted along the river in peaceful silence, save the Riverperson’s low humming and Sans’s occasional snores.

 

Halfway through Waterfall, Sans stirred in his sleep. 

“al, al, alphys.” He slurred her name, it came out sounding like he was saying ‘al fish’. She looked at him and noticed he hadn’t opened his eye sockets, and was still snoring in between words. Sleep talking. “al!” His eye ridges were knitted tight. It didn’t sound like a good dream. She considered waking him up.

“Sans, I’m r-r-right here.” His face relaxed a tiny bit, then he snored contentedly.

“you’re all right, you’re all right.” He suddenly squeezed his arms around her in a tight hug, making her yelp. “where’s dad, al?”

“Sans, you’re d-dreaming. I don’t know who ‘dad’ is.” Sans didn’t budge from clinging to her for dear life, let alone wake up. Dad? Sans had said he and his brother were orphans. Could it be a nightmare about losing his parents?

“i was so scared you were with him. i can’t find him, al. can’t lose you…” He was slurring his words so bad she could barely understand him. His whole body was convulsing. The jittery little bones of his body hit against each other like a living wind chime. Alphys had enough of them herself to recognize the signs he was having a panic attack. The Riverperson looked over their shoulder at the pair in concern. Alphys waved her hand dismissively and they returned to rowing and singing to themselves. She wormed her tail inside his hoodie and ran it up and down his spine in calming circles. 

“Shh, i-it’s ok, you’re having a nightmare. I’m safe, you’re safe. We’re here in the boat on the way to Hotland.” Sans nodded, still sleeping. 

“what about dad?” Well, she was going to have to answer that one with a lie of omission, since it wasn’t like she knew the truth. Or why sleeping Sans thought she would know anything about whoever or wherever ‘dad’ was, for that matter.

“Y-you’re just having a nightmare.” He stopped shaking, and his clamp on her loosened. She sighed with relief.

“i love you, al.” 

She hummed to herself, pretending very hard she hadn’t just heard him say that to her. Nerves were making her already queasy stomach even less stable. Suddenly struck by the need to throw up, she struggled free of the hug and doubled over the lip of the boat. When she had finished being sick, Sans was sitting up and looking at her drowsily.

“hey al, sorry for falling asleep. i must’ve took a doze of my own medicine.” He didn’t seem aware of what he had been saying in his sleep, judging by the casualness of his pun. 

She wasn’t about to tell him either, that was for sure. It was probably just a slip of the tongue, anyway. People say weird stuff in their dreams all the time. “you ok?”

“J-just a little sick, but I’m feeling better now.” He seemed content with that answer, his eyes were already drooping again.

“yeah, you usually feel decent again after a good puke. now, can I have my scaly pillow back?” 

She looked him over with a toothy frown wide across her face. His fit of sleep talking had made it suddenly very difficult for her to judge what the right thing to do was. She realized that the right thing to do and what she wanted to do might be two separate things. She might have felt a little better, but she was still very drunk, and that was not helping the matter, either.

“Uh, a-are we on a date?” He sighed and let himself fall flat on the floor of the boat.

“guess that’s a no, then. tell me when we’re there.”

“S-Sans.” She found a courage in herself she usually didn’t possess. Alcohol was some kind of miracle cure for social anxiety, she concluded. 

“i like you, al. plenty. more than i like most monsters. probably more than i like anybody, except my bro, of course. this can be a date, if you want it to be. this can be a weird intervention where you accidentally forget to tell me not to drink, too. this can be just two strangers who coincidentally decide to skip class on the same day, even. it can be anything in between.”

“W-what do you want it to be?” Silence. He looked up at her with tired eyes.

“dunno. that’s why i’m asking you.” She knew what she wanted this to be, and she knew what it was supposed to be. She let herself for a second even think she knew what Sans wanted this to be. 

“I w-w-want to be your friend.” she concluded. That was the right decision, the one that would hopefully one day lead to his sobriety. She could keep him on the straight and narrow, help push him through his dissertation, get him the doctorate he so obviously deserved. He sat up and nodded. She cleared her throat, that wasn’t all she wanted to say. “T-t-tomorrow.” There was no point in ignoring the elephant in the room. Alphys was a marvelous liar, but she could never lie to herself.

“…and today?” No doubt he already knew, he had been hinting at it himself all day. It wasn’t the right decision, per se, but it wasn’t like it was a terrible decision either. Bad, but not the worst. Definitely a very, very bad decision sober Alphys would probably regret tomorrow, but also one she might be looking back fondly on sometime after that.

“We b-b-barely know each o-other.” Maybe best not to ignore the other elephant in the room, either. “B-b-but I want to change that.” This is what all her anime said college was supposed to be for, right? Even if this was nothing like how the anime said, because it was supposed to be fun and flirty, not one broken soul reaching out in despair for another. “W-w-were you mad when I read your soul?”

“i don’t care if you know about it, al. maybe i even want you to know about it. about me. feels good to have someone else know, especially if that someone’s you.” Why was she so special to him? It didn’t make any sense. 

“C-c-can we, uh, get to know each other? Like, uh, the w-w-whole thing kind of way…?” 

“you’re asking if i want to sleep with you.” He was smiling. Either he thought she was the funniest thing in the world, or he just realized that she was a horrible creep. What an idiot she was, thinking that’s what he had been flirting with her for. She was so terrible at reading people’s intentions, and Sans was even more of an enigma than most people. How could she just assume...? “yeah, al. that sounds pretty damn nice.” Oh.

“J-j-just today. There’s something a-about you and I c-can’t figure it out. After I get that f-f-feeling sorted out, whatever it is, we can start from there? Friendship,” She looked at the way he was eyeing her. It was, well, something she was not used to. Something she could get used to. She blushed and wavered, but didn’t stop talking. “Or uh, something else.”

“anything but strangers.” She nodded. That was certain. She was invested in this little skeleton now, they could never become strangers again. And they were, as the Riverperson had said, two halves of a whole. Was it fate that brought them together? She decided against that. Fate was unscientific, even if it was also the central theme to every romance anime she’d ever seen. This was an accident, but it was going to be a good accident. Maybe not two halves of a whole, then. More like two broken parts that would fit together, if just barely.

“I j-just want you to r-really know me, and uh, I’m not so good at t-t-talking, you know. I…” Her words dissolved. He was kissing her, or whatever passed for a kiss to skeletons, anyway. His teeth were pressed against her forehead. 

“you don’t gotta explain yourself to me, al. i’m never going to judge you, not one bit. i want this too.” It sounded like it was a struggle for him to get that last sentence out. Could it be possible that the famously smooth-talking Sans was shy about something? It was adorable…?

The boat stopped. They had reached Hotland without her even noticing. She stood up and threw some gold into the Riverperson’s free hand. They usually didn’t ask for money, but between Sans’s panic attack and her puking, she was feeling a little guilty for being such a terrible passenger. 

“Tra la la, the man who speaks in hands never strays far from what his hands have shaped.” 

That was the strangest variation on the ‘actions speak louder than words’ proverb Alphys had ever heard. Sans put a hand on their shoulder and nodded curtly at them. Clearly, he took a meaning away from it that she wasn’t getting. The Riverperson waved to the pair and rowed away. Leaning on one another for stability, they made their way to her dorm. 

 

The door to her room clicked shut. They were alone together. How the hell did any of this happen?

“al? you’re staring out into space.” Sans weaved his fingerbones in between her claws and led her to the bed. She wanted to focused on the amazing, baffling thing currently happening to her, but her mind was elsewhere.

“You s-s-said I wasn’t your t-type.” 

“said i was married, too. i like half-truths a lot, al. japes, as they’re more politely known.” She’d be a pretty lousy hypocrite to call him out for lying. It wasn’t like she hadn’t told a fair share of ‘japes’ herself.

“So, uh, when you said you wanted to s-s-sleep with me…?”

“not a jape. that’d be way too mean-spirited for my style of comedy. besides, what kind of lousy comedian tells the same joke twice?” That was far from a reassuring statement, but it would have to do. Giving straight answers was clearly something Sans wasn't good at.

“T-t-the kind of lousy comedian who tells a joke with the punchline ‘I’m not actually going to rub souls with someone’ w-w-when he’s actually going to, in the first place?” That got him laughing again. His pupils glowed with drunken giddiness.

“guess you got me there, al. i’m my own punchline.” He pulled off his hoodie, revealing he was shirtless underneath. From in between the gaps of his ribcage she could see his soul. “well, you gonna come tickle my ribs or what? don’t tell me you’ve got reptile dysfunction.” That actually got a chuckle out of her. The first one all day, and of course, it had to be a completely illogical sex pun. He was going to think she was crude. No, no, this was Sans, he already said he would never judge her.

“W-well, you k-k-know me, I uh, see a bone-r and m-m-my blood goes…cold.” Sans lost his shit, howling with laughter loud enough she was scared her neighbors were going to think she was being murdered by a clown.

“two puns in one, al? i’m but a mere mortal, not fit to rub souls with a goddess such as yourself.”

Sans was so…Sans. He was like his greasy hoodie: comfortable, reliable, familiar. You had to look closely to see the holes. If she hadn’t gone drinking with him today she would have never noticed them. She was in love with his façade. Was she in love with whatever it was covering up, too? Something gave him panic attacks, kept his hope so dangerously low, drove him to drink, could she love that part of him? 

There was only one way to find out, and it was sitting half naked on her bed waiting for her.

**Author's Note:**

> Just another, slightly less standalone oneshot for Repeating Herself. Sans/Alphys is a rarepare if ever there was one, so if you have no interest in my silly AU this is perfectly logical as its own thing. If you have no interest in Sans/Alphys the good news is I kill that off pretty fast and painfully in like, the first chapter of Repeating Herself.
> 
> Be nice on my illustration. It was done with a laptop trackpad in MS Paint. Yes the name of the whiskey is a parody of Wild Turkey, and yes Alphys is wearing a Naruto shirt. I owned that exact shirt in middle school. Middle school was rough, man.


End file.
